Despite Murder, Hikers Say Trail Safe

June 11, 1996|By N.Y. Times News Service

AMICALOLA FALLS, GA. — The slayings of two young women beside a rushing stream near the Appalachian Trail made national headlines not so much because of who the victims were or how the killings were committed, but because of where the crime happened.

The reason the killings had such impact, backpackers and National Park Service officials say, is because they remind people who are already weary and frightened of crime in their cities and neighborhoods that there is no such thing as a perfect sanctuary, no matter how deep into the woods they go.

The bodies of the two young women, their throats cut, were found on June 1 near the trail in the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, and investigators are still searching for the killer.

While Park Service officials believe the slayings to be an isolated incident and hikers say they refuse to let such horrors rob them of the outdoors, the crimes are an ugly reminder of exactly the kind of reality that hikers try to get away from.

``You don't want that horror to come out and touch you when you're sitting under the stars,'' said Steve Spriggs, a graphic designer from Atlanta who has spent the last few days hiking, canoeing and camping at Amicalola Falls, the southernmost part of the Appalachian Trail, which extends from Amicalola Falls all the way to Maine.

The homicide victims, Julianne Williams, 24, of St. Cloud, Minn., and Lollie Winans, 26, of Unity, Maine, were experienced hikers who had been trained as wilderness guides. Park rangers found their bodies near Skyline Drive.

The women, who had pitched a tent near a stream, were found with their throats cut. Investigators have not said how long the women had been dead when they were found, only that they began their hike on May 21. Investigators have passed out pictures of the two women, hoping that hikers or campers will remember seeing them and whoever might have been with them during their hike.

Their deaths raised the homicide toll along the 2,159-mile Appalachian Trail to nine since 1974, when the modern trail opened. It has been more than five years since the last killings on the trail; in 1990, a drifter murdered a man and a woman in their sleeping bags in a trail shelter near Duncannon, Pa.

Those slayings, too, briefly raised questions about the trail's safety. But they were, as these seem to be, random acts and not the work of a serial killer stalking the woods, National Park Service officials and others familiar with the cases say.

``If this had happened on the Upper West Side, no one would be talking about it,'' said Brian King, director of public affairs for the Appalachian Trail Conference. ``There is an expectation that this is a place of peace and tranquillity, and so are the people; that the creeps, the jerks, the socially marginable people of the world don't come here. But they do come. That clash of expectation and reality is driving the concern now.''

King said that ``there is no panic'' among hikers. ``People are shaken up, people are bummed out,'' he said, but he added that there was ``no sense of invasion or intrusion.''

While many hikers said they were more careful now, they continue to use the trail. Investigators ``told us from the beginning that they did not think other hikers were in danger,'' King said. ``It's as safe as a month ago, a year ago.''

Some 22 million people have used the trail in the past five years, and from three million to four million are expected to use it this year.

``I wouldn't hesitate to hike it at all,'' said Lynwood McElroy, 77, of Waynesville, N.C., a retired businessman and avid hiker who has hiked on the trail several times.

It is a fact of life that, in several places along their routes, the Appalachian Trail and other hiking trails run near cities and towns, McElroy said, adding that it was inevitable that criminals would come into contact with hikers.

National Park Service officials, who have posted a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the latest killings, stressed that Americans were much safer inside parks than outside.

``The loss of any life is tragic,'' said Roger Kennedy, the director of the National Park Service. ``But if we're saying, `Am I safe in parks?' the evidence says you are safer than you were five years ago.'' He said violent crime had declined in the parks since 1990.

``There is absolutely no justification for panic or anxiety,'' he said. ``There is occasion for sorrow.''

Spriggs, the camper and hiker from Atlanta, said that he realized the isolated hiking trails were not paradise but that he refused to look for a criminal behind every tree.

``If you worry about that,'' he said, ``you would never go out of your house.''